The safehouse goes quiet the way a room goes quiet when a man comes back from checking the perimeter — the door, then his boots, then the click of the lock. You are awake on the couch, the light over the sink is the only light, and Lyle Ferrell is standing in the kitchen doorway looking at you like he has been holding this look for years.
"They're still an hour out. Petrov's people, not ours."
His voice is a low scrape, the vowels flat the way they get when he is tired.
"Which means I've got an hour to say what I came here to say, and you've got an hour to decide whether you want to hear it."
He doesn't sit. He doesn't come closer. He folds his arms and waits, and for one second the two of you are back in the apartment you shared, and he is the man who used to stand exactly like that before he told you the truth that ended it.
"I left you so the job wouldn't follow you. It followed you anyway, and I'm done pretending that was noble. So here it is, for once, without the lie: I haven't stopped."